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Juan Cole (Informed Comment) – The primary post 9/11 paradigm of US foreign policy has been the war on terrorism, which is to say a profound and kinetic military and counter-insurgency engagement of the US Pentagon, CIA and State Department in the Greater Middle East. This paradigm succeeded the Cold War paradigm of 1946-1991, which […]

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2018: Saudis Made a Play for Regional Hegemony and Tripped over a Single Murder

Juan Cole

The arrogant and impatient young Mohammed Bin Salman, who shouldered aside a raft of uncles and cousins to grab power as crown prince, is something new in Saudi history. The Al Saud, the royal family, had functioned as an oligarchy, but King Salman and his hyperactive son have concentrated power in their hands in an […]

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Are Saudis Deploying Army of Sudanese child-soldiers in Yemen?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times caused an international stir by estimating that 20 percent of Sudanese fighters in Yemen may be 13-17, i.e. child soldiers. The percentage may be as high as 40%. That these child soldiers appear to have been paid for by Saudi Arabia at a […]

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Germany’s Electricity 38% Renewable in 2018, more than Coal for 1st Time

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Germany, a pioneer in renewables among the advanced industrial economies, now gets 38% of its electricity from renewables. In the United States the proportion of electricity generated by renewables is only about 20%, about half as much as Germany, because of the opposition to green energy of Big Oil, Big […]

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Abandoned by Trump, Syrian Kurds frantically turn to Moscow for Protection from Turkey

Juan Cole

Anton Lavrov, a military analyst, writes in the pro-Putin Russian newspaper Izvestia that the withdrawal of US troops from northeast Syria will mainly affect the fate of the Kurds (via BBC Monitoring). He notes that the US has provided the YPG with armored vehicles and antitank missiles and a great deal of ammunition. These medium […]

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Shiite Parties Decry Trump’s ‘Arrogant’ and ‘Disdainful’ Visit to Iraq, Ignoring Iraqis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s surprise visit to a US military base in Iraq on the day after Christmas has provoked a strong critique among some Iraqis, who mind that Trump slipped in and out to visit the Ain al-Assad base in al-Anbar Province but did not bother to meet with any Iraqi officials. […]

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Biggest Stories of 2018: Israel announced Apartheid, Shot Thousands of Civilians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 2018 was in many ways a turning point for the position of Israel in the system of Western, liberal, capitalist democracies. It had long sat uneasily among France, Britain, and the United States, inasmuch as it was founded on a formal racial supremacist principle that Jews must rule the state. […]

Assyrians

Middle East Christians, with the population of Sweden, Celebrate Christmas

Juan Cole

I do a column like this one from time to time, fighting back against the ‘veil of tears’ approach to the study of Middle Eastern Christians. Some have argued that Christianity is declining in the Middle East, and this allegation is certainly true in some ways and in some places. If Egyptian Christians declined from […]

Christianity

Christmas and Sufism: Rumi on the Nativity and the Christ Within

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The great medieval Muslim mystic and poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), interpreted the birth of Jesus as an allegory of the soul. Rumi was born in Balkh in northern Afghanistan, but his family fled the Mongol invasions and settled in Konya in what is now Turkey. Rumi was a refugee […]